The Tales Of Buried Treasure At Tenochtitlan

Hernan Cortes, with an army of Spanish conquistadors and their Native American allies, besieged and destroyed the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan in 1521. The city was greatly damaged during the battle, and in the aftermath of Spain’s conquest of the Aztec Empire, Tenochtitlan was ultimately razed to the ground and rebuilt as Mexico City. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, one of the conquistadors who took part in the campaign, reminisced about the original city of Tenochtitlan, writing, “today all that I then saw is overthrown and destroyed; nothing is left standing” (Conquest of New Spain, chapter 87).

Once the gold-lusting Spaniards gained full control of Tenochtitlan, they were disappointed in the underwhelming amount of treasure that they found in the Aztec capital. Indeed, they tortured the captured Aztec Emperor, Cuauhtémoc (or Guatemoc), for leads on where to find hidden wealth. Cuauhtémoc and other tortured Aztec elites could do little but lead the Spaniards to personal hoards of treasure that they had buried underground or dropped into the marshy lake on which Tenochtitlan had been built. Yet, such sporadic and limited treasure troves did not provide enough loot for Hernan Cortes to divide satisfactorily among his troops.

When the Spaniards set about rebuilding Tenochtitlan as Mexico City, they unintendingly found a new source of buried treasure. The incident occurred while the Spaniards were grading and leveling the rubble at Tenochtitlan for new construction. Bernal Díaz described the scene:

“After we conquered that great and strong city and divided the ground we decided to build a church to our patron and guide St James in place of Huichilobos’ cue, and a great part of the site was taken for the purpose. When the ground was excavated to lay a foundation, gold and silver and chalchihuites, and pearls, and seed-pearls, and other precious stones were found in great quantities; and a settler in Mexico who built on another part of the site found the same” (Conquest of New Spain, chapter 92).

Upon the discovery of the treasure, a court battle ensued over who should take possession of it, with the church, the crown and the local settlers all hoping to get a piece. During the legal dispute, Spanish officials also investigated the origin of the treasure by asking (or interrogating) influential Aztecs about the hoard of wealth that was found under the cue. The aforementioned Bernal Díaz wrote of this, claiming that the captured Emperor Cuauhtémoc and other Aztec elites explained “all the inhabitants of Mexico had thrown jewels and other things into the foundations, as was recorded in their pictures and records of ancient times. The treasure was therefore preserved for the building of St James’s church” (Conquest of New Spain, chapter 92).

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Representation of Tenochtitlan by Diego Rivera, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Díaz, translated by J. M. Cohen. New York: Penguin Books, 1963.
• https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32474/32474-h/32474-h.htm#FNanchor_66_67 
• http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32475/32475-h/32475-h.htm 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cuauhtemoc 
• https://www.britannica.com/place/Tenochtitlan 
• https://www.britannica.com/place/Mexico-City

William The Conqueror Was Spared By His Son During A Battle Over Land

Robert II was the eldest son of William the Conqueror, the famous Duke of Normandy who conquered England in 1066.  Although Robert was designated to eventually inherit his father’s dukedom of Normandy, he was impatient for power and wanted to be given a realm to govern as soon as possible. William the Conqueror, however, was staunchly unwilling to delegate the governance of his Norman lands to Robert, and as the years rolled by, the repudiated son became more and more frustrated. By 1077, Robert had run out of patience, and he reportedly stormed out of his father’s court and went into a self-imposed exile, hoping he could take control of Normandy with the help of his father’s enemies in France.

In 1079, Robert II returned to Normandy with the help of troops from Flanders, and with the support of King Philip I of France. Robert’s reappearance caused such a stir in Normandy that William the Conqueror was forced to mobilize an army and take to the field against his wayward child. Father and son clashed near Gerberoi castle, a fort granted to Robert by King Philip I. The battle was apparently quite chaotic, and William the Conqueror was reported to have been unhorsed during the fray. Before or during the fall from his horse, William was said to have also suffered an injury to his arm or hand. Worst of all, when King William’s foes realized that he had fallen from his mount, Robert became fully aware of his father’s vulnerable position.

With William the Conqueror at his mercy, Robert supposedly made an honorable choice—he wanted land, not his father’s death, and decided to let King William escape. According to the Chronicle of Florence of Worcester, “Robert, recognizing his father’s voice, instantly dismounted, and, bidding him to mount his own charger, suffered him to depart. The king soon afterward retreated having had many of his men slain and some taken prisoner, and his son William [II Rufus] and serval others wounded” (entry for AD 1079). Despite Robert’s victory in the battle at Gerberoi, which was also attested to in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, William the Conqueror eventually regained momentum and won the war, forcing Robert II to retreat once more to Flanders.  Although he would continue trying to seize Normandy by force, Robert would not succeed in claiming the dukedom until after William the Conqueror’s death in 1087.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Bayeux Tapestry scene of Battle of Hastings showing knights and horses, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle translated by Benjamin Thorpe in 1861 and republished by Cambridge University Press, 2012.
• The Chronicle of Florence of Worcester translated by Thomas Forester. London: Petter and Galpin, originally published 1854. 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-I-king-of-England/New-alliances 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-II-duke-of-Normandy 
• https://www.ancient.eu/William_the_Conqueror/ 
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/trail/conquest/norman/william_the_conqueror_01.shtml 
• https://www.royal.uk/william-the-conqueror

William The Conqueror’s Rebel Roundup Of 1071

Although William the Conqueror defeated the Anglo-Saxon King Harold Godwinson and seized the throne of England in 1066, the surviving Anglo-Saxon royals and their loyalists continued resisting Norman rule for years to come. The late King Harold’s sons launched several ineffective attacks against Norman-controlled England from a base in Ireland, while another Anglo-Saxon claimant to the throne, Edgar the Ætheling, inspired more threatening (but ultimately unsuccessful) rebellions in the Northumbrian region, even going so far as to enlist the help of the Scots and the Danes in his doomed uprisings. For many a ruler, such attacks, uprisings and foreign interventions might have been fatal. William the Conqueror, however, was one of the most competent rulers of the Middle Ages, and with his Norman war machine and castle-building prowess, William’s occupation of England was too firm for the Anglo-Saxon resistance to overcome.

By 1071, the hopes and morale of the resistance in Northumbria had plummeted. Even Earls Edwin and Morcar, two of the most prominent leaders of the resistance, decided to abandon England and flee to Scotland, where Edgar the Ætheling had already found asylum. The earls decided to split up for their journey, Edwin leading some followers on a route by land, while Morcar took to the sea with other high-profile resistance leaders. Unfortunately, neither party would have any luck on their journey in 1071.

Earl Edwin’s attempt to escape came to a quick end. As it happened, there were traitors in the party of rebels that fled by land. Consequently, Earl Edwin’s life ended in a grisly ambush on the road.  Earl Morcar and the resistance members who decided to flee by sea made better progress. They successfully boarded a ship and started working their way up the network of English rivers, eventually reaching the Isle of Ely, a haven for dissidents. Yet, Morcar’s party, too, did not escape the attention of King William’s spies and informants. When the rebels landed in Ely, King William was quickly informed of their location. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle concisely described the king’s swift and overwhelming siege of the rebels’ position: “when king William was informed of that, he ordered out a naval force and a land-force, and beset the land all about, and wrought a bridge and went in, and [simultaneously attacked with] the naval force on the water-side. And then the outlaws went and surrendered to the king” (A.n. M.LXXI).

Of all the resistance leaders at Ely, only the semi-legendary figure, Hereward the Wake, was able to escape. The less-fortunate warriors who were captured during the siege faced more gruesome fates, including mutilation, imprisonment or execution. Earl Morcar was reportedly imprisoned for the rest of William the Conqueror’s reign and died, still in jail, sometime during the reign of William II Rufus (r. 1087-1100).

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Scene from the life of William the Conqueror by James William Edmund Doyle (1822–1892), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle translated by Benjamin Thorpe in 1861 and republished by Cambridge University Press, 2012.
• The Chronicle of Florence of Worcester translated by Thomas Forester. London: Petter and Galpin, originally published 1854. 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-I-king-of-England/The-Battle-of-Hastings 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edgar-the-Aetheling 
• http://www.englishmonarchs.co.uk/normans_15.html 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hereward-the-Wake 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-II-king-of-England

The Tale Of The Lone Norwegian Warrior Who, For A Time, Single-Handedly Held Back King Harold Godwinson’s Forces At Stamford Bridge

With the death of King Edward the Confessor in January, 1066, England was plunged into an epic showdown for the vacated throne. Harold Godwinson, Edward’s brother-in-law, became the Anglo-Saxon champion for England and he was elected to the throne. Foreign claimants, however, would soon arrive from Norway and Normandy in mere months to challenge King Harold Godwinson for the English crown. Of the invaders, the first to arrive was King Harald Hardrada of Norway, an experienced warrior-king who had been a mercenary for the Rus, a Varangian Guardsman in Constantinople, and a Viking raider, before he returned home to become king of Norway around 1045. In September, 1066, Harald Hardrada—with a reported armada of 300 ships—began militarily campaigning in the Northumbria region of England. The Norwegians were aided by Harold Godwinson’s scorned brother, Tostig, and they defeated the Northumbrian regional forces in battle, forcing York to surrender. It was while Harald Hardrada was on this winning streak in the north that King Harold Godwinson pulled together an army and rushed his troops toward York to face the Norwegian threat.

Harold Godwinson’s army moved with such speed that he caught the experienced Norwegian king totally off guard. The Norwegians were divided at the time, with Harald Hardrada and his portion of the army camping near Stamford Bridge (on the River Derwent), while the rest of the army remained at the ships near Ricall and the River Ouse. Most importantly, the Norwegians at the bridge site had reportedly left much of their armor by the ships, as they were not expecting an attack so soon. Therefore, when Harold Godwinson and the Anglo-Saxons fell on the unsuspecting and under-equipped Norwegians camped by Stamford Bridge, the battle turned into a massacre.

While the Scandinavian and English sources disagreed slightly on details of the battle, they both made the same key points—Harald Hardrada and Tostig died in battle and a majority of the Norwegian army was destroyed. According to the Scandinavian tradition, Harald Hardrada’s reserve troops from Ricall made a long and tiring march to Stamford Bridge in hopes of saving their king, yet they were too tired to fight upon arrival. The Anglo-Saxon version (seen as the more accurate account) instead claimed that after Harald Hardrada and Tostig were slain, the Norwegian warriors at Stamford Bridge began a frantic retreat to their ships and reinforcements at Ricall. In both of the scenarios, a single Norwegian warrior was said to have played a major role by making a lone last stand on Stamford Bridge, either (in the English tradition) for covering his comrades’ retreat to the ships or (in the Scandinavian version) by trying to hold the Anglo-Saxons back until the approaching troops from Ricall could arrive.

As the story goes, the unnamed Norwegian warrior was a one-man wrecking crew with near superhuman fighting ability. Buying time for the Norwegian side, the Viking champion took up position at a choke point, reportedly Stamford Bridge itself, and determined to fight to the death. He gave the Anglo-Saxons immense trouble, reportedly besting anyone who came against him in single combat, and he could just as easily deflect or block any arrows shot in his direction. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle described the scene, including the English army’s eventual solution for defeating the mighty warrior: “there was one of the Norwegians who withstood the English folk, so that they could not pass over the bridge or gain the victory. Then an Englishman aimed at him with an arrow, but it availed naught; and then came another under the bridge and pierced him through the corselet” (ASC, entry for 1066). With the Norwegian warrior’s death, the Anglo-Saxons were able to rush across the bridge to finish the battle, either by crashing into the regrouping Norwegians or by pursuing the fleeing invaders all the way to their ships. Whichever way the battle really played out, Harold Godwinson won a decisive victory and let the son of the slain Norwegian king lead the survivors home—they reportedly only needed 24 of their original 300 ships to ferry the remnants of Harald Hardrada’s army away.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Battle of Stamford Bridge painted by Peter Nicolai Arbo  (1831–1892), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle translated by Benjamin Thorpe in 1861 and republished by Cambridge University Press, 2012.
• Heimskringla, by Snorri Sturluson and translated by Lee Hollander. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964, 2018. 
• King Harald’s Saga, by Snorri Sturluson, translated by Magnus Mangusson and Hermann Pálsson. New York: Penguin Books, 1966, 2005. 
• https://www.ancient.eu/article/1306/battle-of-stamford-bridge/ 

The Un-Roman Tactic That Roman Consul Furius Agrippa Used To Make His Troops Fight With Passion

According to the Roman historian Livy (c. 59 BCE-17 CE), and the sources and tradition that he relied on, the Roman Republic went to war against a coalition of Volscians and Aequians in 446 BCE, when the consuls of Rome were Titus Quinctius Capitolinus and Furius Agrippa. The Volscians and Aequians caught the Romans off guard, or, at least, in a moment of unpreparedness. Consequently, the invaders ran rampant over Roman land, setting up a base at a place called Corbio, from which they launched raids into Roman territory. While the raiders were pillaging the countryside, the Romans were pulling together their military. Once Rome’s warriors were organized and equipped, the consuls Quinctius and Agrippa led the troops out for battle.

After a reported three days of marching, the Romans found their prey near Corbio and both sides readied for combat. Rome’s forces, according to Livy, lined up in a simple formation with three infantry divisions, as well as a fourth division consisting solely of cavalry. Consul Quinctius took command of the Roman right wing, while Agrippa led the left. Additional trusted officers were tasked with leading the center and the cavalry. Between the two commanding consuls, Quinctius was the better general, and therefore he also took up the responsibility of commander-in-chief of the whole formation.

Accounts of ancient battles, especially ones written well after the time of the events described, as Livy’s account was, can be frequently filled with folklore or spiced up by the historian’s imagination, as ancient historians often wanted to entertain as much as they wanted to inform. Therefore, the inspiring battle-speeches, the heroic infantry charges and the decisive cavalry hammer-and-anvil strikes that are described by the ancient sources may not have actually occurred in reality the way they were recorded by eloquent historians. Nevertheless, tales and folklore captivated the minds of the ancient writers and it is quite possible that many of the stories that they included in their accounts of events were based, some way or another, in truth or a grain thereof. Such may be the case of Consul Agrippa and the story of how he kept his troops motivated during the battle against the Volscians and Aequians.

According to Livy, the Roman right wing (led by Consul Quinctius), as well as the center infantry division and the cavalry, were all splendidly maneuvering their forces, pressing back the invaders, disrupting the enemy lines, and trampling and stabbing their foes into submission. It was only in Consul Agrippa’s left wing, so the story goes, that the Romans were struggling in the battle against the Volscians and Aequians. According to Livy, Agrippa was “a magnificent fighter and still in the prime of his life” (History of Rome, 3.70), as well as a man still wanting a prosperous political and military career. So as to not lose honor for himself or the state, the underperforming consul was desperate to inspire his troops to fight with more ferocity, and thereby regain momentum and prestige for his infantry division. In order to achieve his objective, the consul was willing to go to extreme lengths. What Agrippa would allegedly do next, for a Roman, was unthinkable and against everything that the Roman military stood for. Hoping to rile his troops into a frenzy, Consul Agrippa reportedly tossed the revered battle standards of his forces over to the enemy. For a Roman, not recovering these lost banners would be one of the worst shames imaginable. By throwing the standards behind enemy lines, Consul Agrippa ensured that the only way the Romans could recover the banners was by defeating the opposing forces.  Livy described the patently un-Roman move and the effect it had on the consul’s troops:

“Aware that things were going worse in his own sector than anywhere else, [Agrippa] snatched the standards from their bearers and pressed forward with them in his own hands—and even, to shame his men to greater efforts, flung some of them into the thick of the enemy ranks. The ruse succeeded; a furious onslaught followed, and victory along the whole front was won” (History of Rome, 3.70).

After bringing his personal command to victory through those unusual means, Agrippa marched his troops to join consul Quinctius in a final assault on the Volscian and Aequian camp at Corbio. By this point, the army of raiders had been killed or scattered, so the assault to take the camp required little effort. With the camp captured, there was little left to do but to plunder what was left behind and march back to Rome for a glorious reception.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Sources:

• The History of Rome by Livy, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt. New York: Penguin Classics, 2002.

Widowed Queen Fredegund’s Assassination Attempt Against Widowed Queen Brunhild

In 566 or 567, two Visigoth sisters married two Frankish brothers. The brides were Galswintha and Brunhild, daughters of King Athanagild of the Visigoths (r. 551/554-567), while the grooms were Chilperic and Sigebert, both sons of the Merovingian Dynasty’s King Chlotar I of the Franks (r. 511-561). At the time of the marriages, Chilperic and Sigebert (with two other brothers, Charibert and Guntram) had succeeded their father as kings of different sections of the Frankish Empire. This was the fractured environment—with several independent Merovingian kings vying for primacy in the Frankish sphere of influence—that the Visigoth princesses were marrying into. With the unions of Galswintha to Chilperic, and Brunhild to Sigebert, life could have been like a fairytale or a folk story if the times and people were kinder. Yet, in the end, events unfolded more like a saga of horrors and bloodshed, with feuds that lasted for generations.

Brunhild and Sigebert, it appears, had a happy marriage and got along quite well. Galswintha, however, found Chilperic to be a poor husband. Despite the presence of his new wife, Chilperic continuously returned to concubines and mistresses that he had favored in the past, particularly a woman named Fredegund, whom he valued above all else. Chilperic, after only a year of marriage, came to the conclusion that he had made a mistake in marrying Galswintha. Driven on by these thoughts, Chilperic ultimately decided to end the marriage. He, however, did not complete this goal by separation or by sending his wife off to a convent. Instead, he horrifically had Galswintha strangled to death in 567 or 568, and quickly married Fredegund, who reportedly had encouraged the murder.

Brunhild, understandably, was infuriated and enraged when she heard the news that Chilperic had murdered her sister. Brunhild was supported by her husband, Sigebert, who admirably championed her cause and eventually mobilized his forces for a war against his own brother Chilperic. By 575, Sigebert was visibly winning his war against Chilperic, but just as the conflict was seemingly nearing its end, Sigebert was assassinated, leaving behind Brunhild and a five-year-old son named Childebert II. Chilperic and Fredegund were the prime suspects for the murder.

Childebert II, though a vulnerable child-king, was looked after by his uncle, King Guntram (r. 561-593), and by the late Sigebert’s loyal vassals. Brunhild, although she was sometimes separated from her son, also continued to act and intrigue for his interests. The realms of Childebert and Guntram were aligned against Chilperic until around 581, when Chilperic had some success convincing the teenage Childebert to turn against Guntram. Uncle Guntram, however, was able to bring young Childebert back to his side by 584 by giving the boy control of Marseilles. Later that very year, history would repeat and another assassination would occur. This time, it was King Chilperic who fell to an assassin’s blade, leaving behind Fredegund and an infant son named Chlotar II.

With the death of Chilperic, King Guntram was now the undisputed patriarch of the Merovingian Dynasty, ruling alongside two nephews, one an ambitious teenager and the other a baby. Immediately upon his brother’s death, Guntram seemingly acted with two goals at heart—self empowerment (he seized for himself lands such as Paris, Tours and Poitiers), while also striving to save the Merovingian Dynasty from further royal assassinations within his lifetime. In furtherance of the latter goal, he placed baby Chlotar II under his protection and sheltered the widowed Fredegund from Childebert II, as the teenage king wished to avenge the death of his father (Sigebert) and his aunt (Galswintha), in whose deaths Fredegund had been implicated.

After Childebert’s demands for Fredegund to be handed over had ceased, Guntram sent her off to live at a manor in the vicinity of Rouen. As had happened with young Childebert II, the vassals of the late Chilperic pledged their loyalty to baby Chlotar, and like her rival Queen Brunhild, Fredegund took upon herself the task of wielding espionage and intrigue on her young son’s behalf.

Not long after reaching her manor near Rouen, presumably still in 584, Fredegund launched an assassination attempt against Brunhild. As the story goes, she sent an agent to infiltrate Brunhild’s household. The assassin took on the guise of a cleric and acted with such piety and humility that he quickly worked his way closer and closer into Brunhild’s inner circle. Yet, something was off about him—maybe observers could sense insincerity, or perhaps his cover story just didn’t fit. Whatever the case, Brunhild’s household became suspicious of the cleric and eventually interrogated him. During the questioning, in-between bouts of flogging, the would-be assassin reportedly confessed to everything. Brunhild, for her part, spared the agent and merely sent him back to his master. The move, however, may not have been too merciful, for Fredegund had a reputation for wanton use of torture and execution. According to Bishop (and historian) Gregory of Tours, “When he [the assassin] told Fredegund what had happened and confessed that he had failed in his mission, she punished him by having his hands and feet cut off” (History of the Franks, VII.20).

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Fredegund watching the marriage of Chilperic and Galswintha, c. 19th century, painted by Lawrence Alma Tadema, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours, translated by Lewis Thorpe. New York: Penguin Classics, 1971.
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Fredegund 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Brunhild-queen-of-Austrasia 
• https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780198662778.001.0001/acref-9780198662778-e-520